Haig’s Quality Printing — Betting on Color

AT HAIG’S Quality Printing, the work is all about color. Although CEO Haig Atamian modestly describes the company as “a typical commercial printer,” Haig’s serves the entertainment industry and casinos, as well as the U.S. government and many nationwide corporations—customers who are known for exacting standards and an eye for detail.

To satisfy what can be very particular demands, Haig’s uses stochastic screening, the six-color Hexachrome process and Van Son’s Vs Series inks to produce the vivid and dynamic color the company calls “dimensional printing.”

In 1993, when the printer moved from Palm Springs, CA, to set up an all-new shop in Las Vegas, Haig’s began experimenting with stochastic screening. The process utilizes smaller dots in a random pattern on the printing plate to prevent moiré and to more accurately reproduce color shading. In addition, Hexachrome, a patented process developed and licensed by Pantone Inc., employs six process colors for printing rather than the conventional four, dramatically increasing the gamut of printable color, from subtle fleshtones to bright fluorescents. Combining these processes gives the printed image a depth that’s almost three-dimensional.

“All the work we do is six-, seven-, or eight-color jobs. People who spend that kind of money want a high quality level and we achieve that,” Atamian says. “We have customers across the country and all over the world. When they sign off on a proof, it’s our responsibility to make sure that there’s no color shifting in the finished piece. The products used to accomplish this become critical.”

Larger Color Gamut

Haig’s was one of the first West Coast printers to install an Agfa Galileo computer-to-plate system to create the extremely precise plates required for stochastic and Hexachrome printing. In the pressroom, the company operates both a six-color, 40˝ Heidelberg Speedmaster CD and an eight-color, 40˝ Mitsubishi sheetfed press, as well as a Heidelberg M-110 half-web. And then there’s the issue of ink.